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Today:
New Blood Pressure Guidelines Mean You May Now Have Hypertension
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Systolic blood pressure, the top number, represents the pressure in the blood vessels when the heart is squeezing blood into the body. Diastolic blood pressure, the bottom number, is the pressure in the blood vessels when the heart is relaxing. Now, patients are categorized as having "elevated blood pressure" if their blood pressure is 120-129 over less than 80 mm Hg, or stage 1 hypertension if they are 130-139/80-89. On average, for every additional 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a person gets per week, systolic blood pressure decreases by 2 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure drops by 1 mm Hg, with the largest reduction occurring at 150 minutes of dynamic exercise per week. These include healthy diet, regular exercise, stopping or avoiding smoking, sleeping seven to nine hours per night, and controlling weight, cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure.

Top Stories:
Chronic Insomnia May Spark Changes in The Brain That Trigger Dementia
NEWS | 28 September 2025
A large, long-running US study of older adults has now linked chronic insomnia to changes inside the brain that set the stage for dementia. Participants were classed as having chronic insomnia if their medical records contained at least two insomnia diagnoses a month apart – a definition that captured 16 percent of the sample. Finding higher levels of both in people with chronic insomnia strengthens the idea that poor sleep may push the brain towards a double hit. Poor sleep often co-exists with depression, anxiety, chronic pain and sleep apnea – all of which themselves hurt the brain. Chronic insomnia appears to accelerate both amyloid buildup and silent blood-vessel damage, nudging the brain toward cognitive decline – especially in people who already carry the high-risk ApoE4 gene.

World:
The First Black Hole We Ever Saw Is Doing Something Never Seen Before
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Images taken of the Universe's most photogenic black hole over time reveal strange and exciting changes in its magnetic field. In fact, between 2017 and 2021, the magnetic field completely flipped direction – the first time such a change has been seen in the environment around a black hole. Related: Astronomers Witness Supermassive Black Hole Firing Out Jets at 99% of The Speed of LightM87* is a supermassive black hole in a galaxy 55 million light-years away with a mass around 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. As the first subject of the Event Horizon collaboration's mission to image a supermassive black hole, the object has become one of the most studied supermassive black holes in the entire Universe. That includes the best observations to date of the place where jets are launched from the poles of an active black hole.

Current Events:
This Week in Science: World's Second-Largest Diamond, Fishy Finger Origins, And More!
NEWS | 28 September 2025
This week in science: The world's second-largest diamond is being evaluated; the genetic secrets of a 117-year-old woman are uncovered; the bizarre origin story of our fingers; and much more! World's Second-Largest Diamond Awaits Pricing After Discovery in BotswanaThe world's second-largest known diamond – a 2,488-carat stone known as Motswedi – is being analyzed and valued for potential sale. "But it could also maybe end up in the hands of a sheikh that would like to add it to his collection." Despite her advanced years, her immune system and gut microbiome both had markers that matched much younger cohorts. Fish Buttholes May Be The Reason We Now Have Fingers, Study FindsFish buttholes might be the reason we now have fingers.

News Flash:
The Alarming Boom in Height Surgery, And Why It's So Risky
NEWS | 28 September 2025
This is the promise of limb-lengthening surgery. While the number of people undergoing cosmetic limb-lengthening surgery each year still remains relatively small, the procedure is growing in popularity. Reports suggest that in some private clinics, cosmetic cases of limb-lengthening surgery now outnumber medically necessary ones. Intense painThe underlying challenge of limb-lengthening surgery is the same: the body must constantly repair a bone that is being pulled apart. Some patients report depression or regret, particularly if the modest gain in height does not deliver the hoped-for improvement in confidence.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 28 September 2025
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Latest:
The Moon Is Rusting, And It's All Earth's Fault
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Related: Bizarre Discovery Reveals The Moon Is Rusting, Even Without Liquid Water And OxygenThe shocking discovery of hematite on the Moon was made a few years ago. During the full Moon, terrestrial oxygen ions pelt our lunar satellite as it passes through Earth's magnetotail. Meanwhile, sitting in Earth's shadow means that 99 percent of the solar wind is blocked from reaching the Moon. A high-energy beam mimicking Earth's wind was able to reverse the oxidation process, but a low-energy beam mimicking the solar wind did not. This suggests that the solar wind is incapable of reversing the lunar iron rusting caused by a periodic influx of Earth oxygen.

Breaking:
Scientists Discover Giant Black Hole Growing 2.4X Faster Than Theoretical Limit
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Related: This Black Hole Is Eating Stuff at Over 40 Times The Theoretical Limit"How did the Universe create the first generation of black holes?" Matter arranges itself in galaxies that swirl around the gravitational hub these black holes provide, the glue that holds the galaxy in orbit. The maximum sustainable rate at which a black hole can feed is the Eddington limit. A single photon isn't going to do much, but the blaze of an active supermassive black hole accretion disk is another matter. "With this calculation, we can now test different ideas on how black holes are born."

Trending:
A Million-Year-Old Skull Just Rewrote The Origin Story of Humanity
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Of the two skulls, Yunxian 2 was the least distorted, so the researchers chose it as the best option for a digital reconstruction. The size of its braincase was larger than that of Homo erectus (although still smaller than that of Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens). The researchers believe that it fits in the Homo longi clade, a sister group to Homo sapiens, and the lineage to which the Denisovans are thought to belong. Subsequently, Homo longi developed distinct traits around 1.2 million years ago, and Homo sapiens around 1.02 million years ago. "It more or less doubles the time of origin of Homo sapiens."

This Just In:
Scientists Finally Reveal Why 'Hobbits' Were So Small
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Aptly nicknamed Hobbits, Homo floresiensis were short-statured, at just over 3 feet (1 meter) tall, and had a chimp-size brain. Getting small on islandsThe small body size of Homo floresiensis was likely an adaptation to the unique conditions of their island environment on Flores. Evolving small body size as an adaptation to living on an isolated island is known as insular nanism. Because brain size and body size are tightly linked, body size evolution inherently affects brain evolution. Variation in body size dictates brain size; it is not a measure of cognitive ability.

Today:
This Rock Is Not From Earth, And We Can Finally Reveal Its Story
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Observatories around the world then joined forces to study every aspect of its journey, using a range of scientific instruments. After two-and-a-half years, all the information gathered about the asteroid was published in a study in Nature Astronomy this week. 2023 CX1 likely broke off from a larger rock in the Massalia asteroid family in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to the study. As the asteroid entered our planet's atmosphere, it disintegrated "very brutally in two stages" around 28 kilometres above Earth, Zanda said. As that 20-metre-wide asteroid descended, "there were five successive fragments, each releasing a small amount of energy," Zanda said.

Top Stories:
NASA: Nuclear Explosion Could Save Moon From Asteroid Strike in 2032
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Asteroid 2024 YR4 caused quite a stir last year when it was discovered and originally calculated to have a 3 percent chance of hitting Earth. However, in order to accurately deflect 2024 YR4, we need to know how much it weighs. But in either case, those missions would have to give up their intended targets to get close enough to 2024 YR4. It might not involve Bruce Willis sacrificing himself, but setting off a nuclear explosion at some height off the surface of 2024 YR4. We're not even sure if 2024 YR4 is actually going to hit the Moon yet, and we won't find out until 2028.

World:
Space Can Hurt Your Vision, And Now We Can Predict The Damage
NEWS | 28 September 2025
A large proportion of astronauts experience vision problems, but researchers have now developed a new AI-powered detection tool to predict these issues before liftoff. The US team focused specifically on spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS), the term for vision degradation linked to time in space. "We're essentially using AI to give doctors a predictive tool for a condition that develops in space, before astronauts even leave Earth." "One of the most exciting findings was how similar the AI's attention patterns were across both space and Earth data," says ophthalmologist Mark Christopher, from UC San Diego. "This strengthens the case for using Earth-based models to study space health – a promising development towards advancing human spaceflight research."

Current Events:
Vast Reserves of Precious Platinum Could Be Hidden on The Moon
NEWS | 28 September 2025
There, up to 6,500 impact craters may contain precious platinum-group metals, such as platinum, palladium, and rhodium. But asteroid mining presents its own challenges, even aside from the astronomical (cough) cost. The big question that presents itself is, then: Does the Moon have the platinum group metals and water that we need? Chennamangalam and his colleague embarked on a survey of asteroid impact craters to find out. It may still be that asteroid mining is in humanity's future.

News Flash:
Musicians Don't Feel Pain Like The Rest of Us, Surprising Study Reveals
NEWS | 28 September 2025
Pain also changes our brain activity. Musicians and painIn our study, we wanted to look at whether musical training and all the brain changes it creates could influence how musicians feel and deal with pain. To do this, we deliberately induced hand pain over several days in both musicians and non-musicians to see if there was any difference in how they responded to the pain. Then we used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure brain activity. This was a small study of just 40 people, but the results clearly showed that the musicians' brains responded differently to pain.